Last week I held a presentation about XPages in general. Part of that presentation was a brief compare of XPages against LAMP and Microsoft in terms of:

1.) Storage (SQL vs. No-SQL)
2.) Support
3.) Skills needed to develop solutions
4.) Deployment of a solution to one or multiple servers
5.) Scability / Performance
6.) Security
7.) features delivered right out of the box
8.) costs
9.) how productive a developer is / how fast a solution can be developed
10.) ease of administration

From my point of view, I answer these questions as follows:

1.) Advantage depends on the requirements. Personally I feel a No-SQL store like the NSF is an advantage in many cases, and XPages can play with SQL stores just nice, so since Microsoft does not support any No-SQL storage, I see an advantage for XPages and Domino here.

2.) Both have support by their vendor (IBM or Microsoft), so this is equal.

3.) For XPages you need very common skills like HTML, CSS, Java and JavaScript, plus some knowledge of the No-SQL store. Pretty easy for a decent web / java developer.
For Microsoft, you need more proprietary skills like C# and Sharepoint, don't you? Therefore I see a light advantage for XPages here, too.

4.) Clear advantage XPages and Domino: the deployment is as easy as file -> replica -> new. And keeping multiple instances of an application on multiple servers in sync is a no-brainer thanks to replication. There is no equivalent solution on Microsoft.

5.) I'm not sure here. I think Domino and XPages scale well, but I would not build a website with a load like Amazon or Google on it. How does the IIS scale? I believe XPages and Microsoft are somewhat equal here.

6.) Clear advantage XPages and Domino. It is a very common sport to hack a Microsoft site, you need to administer a Microsoft server very carefully and you need to be sure to always install all patches. I hear about hacked Microsoft websites frequently, but has there every been a hack of a Domino based site?

7.) For a complete Microsoft solution (with a directory, storage, search etc.) you need many servers (IIS, SQL, Sharepoint, Exchange...), while Domino delivers a very rich feature set right out of the box (directory, mail, search, security, replication etc.). Clear advantage XPages and Domino.

8.) You have licence costs for both, while you need more hardware and software on the Microsoft side. I think Microsoft is more expensive, but I'm not sure.

9.) I don't know how productive a Microsoft web developer is. But I know that with XPages, a good developer is very, very, very productive.
The XPages platform is easy to use (if you already have all the basic skills for HTML, CSS, Java etc.) and thanks to alll the ready-to-use controls (ExtLib, OpenNTF) you have solutions for so many requirements in no time.
Is there something similar on the Microsoft platform?

10.) Clear advantage XPages and Domino. Domino is one server, while Microsoft always need many servers. Domino clearly tells you when there is a problem and what the problem is (for example, by using debug variables in the notes.ini and then looking at the Domino console). I feel Domino is a solution very easy to administer.

And now I'm curiois. How would you answer these 10 questions? Where do you see an advantage for XPages or for Microsoft?